The Axis powers (German: Achsenmächte, Italian: Potenze dell'Asse, Japanese: 枢軸国 (Sūjikukoku?)), also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and Japan. The "Rome-Berlin Axis" became a full military alliance in 1939 under the Pact of Steel, and the Tripartite Pact of 1940 fully integrated the military aims of Germany, Italy, and Japan. At their zenith in the midst of World War II, the Axis powers ruled empires that dominated large parts of Europe, Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, but the war ended with their total defeat and dissolution. Like the Allies, membership of the Axis was fluid, and other nations entered and later left the Axis during the course of the war.[1]

Germany

Japan

Italy

The belligerents during World War II
fought as partners in one of two major alliances: the Axis and the
Allies. The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany,
Italy, and Japan. These three countries recognized German hegemony over
most of continental Europe; Italian hegemony over the Mediterranean Sea;
and Japanese hegemony over East Asia and the Pacific.

Although the Axis partners never developed institutions to coordinate
foreign or military policy as the Allies did, the Axis partners had two
common interests: 1) territorial expansion and foundation of empires
based on military conquest and the overthrow of the post-World War I
international order; and 2) the destruction or neutralization of Soviet
Communism.

On November 1, 1936, Germany and Italy, reflecting their common
interest in destabilizing the European order, announced a Rome-Berlin
Axis one week after signing a treaty of friendship. Nearly a month
later, on November 25, 1936, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan signed the
so-called Anti-Comintern Pact directed at the Soviet Union. Italy joined
the Anti-Comintern Pact on November 6, 1937. On May 22, 1939, Germany
and Italy signed the so-called Pact of Steel, formalizing the Axis
alliance with military provisions. Finally, on September 27, 1940,
Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, which became known
as the Axis alliance.

Even before the Tripartite Pact, two of the three Axis powers had
initiated conflicts that would become theaters of war in World War II.
On July 7, 1937, Japan invaded China to initiate the war in the Pacific;
while the German invasion of Polandon September 1, 1939, unleashed the European war. Italy entered World War II on the Axis side on June 10, 1940, as the defeat of France became apparent.

OTHER COUNTRIES JOIN THE AXIS ALLIANCEIn July 1940, just weeks after the defeat of France, Hitler decided that Nazi Germany would attack the Soviet Union
the following spring. In order to secure raw materials, transit rights
for German troops, and troop contributions for the invasion from
sympathetic powers, Germany began to cajole and pressure the southeast
European states to join the Axis. Nazi Germany offered economic aid to
Slovakia and military protection and Soviet territory to Romania, while
warning Hungary that recent German support for Hungarian annexations of
Czechoslovak and Romanian territory might change to the benefit of
Slovakia and Romania.

Italy’s failed effort to conquer Greece in the late autumn and winter
of 1940-1941 exacerbated German concerns about securing their
southeastern flank in the Balkans. Greek entry into the war and
victories in northern Greece and Albania allowed the British to open a
Balkan front against the Axis in Greece that might threaten Romania’s
oil fields, which were vital to Nazi Germany’s invasion plans. To subdue
Greece and move the British off the European mainland, Nazi Germany now
required troop transport through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

After the Italo-Greek front opened on October 28, 1940, German
pressure on Hungary and the Balkan States intensified. Hoping for
preferential economic treatment, mindful of recent German support for
annexation of northern Transylvania, and eager for future Axis support
for acquiring the remainder of Transylvania, Hungary joined the Axis on
November 20, 1940. Having already requested and received a German
military mission in October 1940, the Romanians joined on November 23,
1940. They hoped that loyal support for a German invasion of the Soviet
Union and faithful oil deliveries would destroy the Soviet threat,
return the provinces annexed by the Soviet Union in June 1940, and win
German support for the return of northern Transylvania. Both politically
and economically dependent on Germany for its very existence as an
“independent” state, Slovakia followed suit on November 24.

Bulgaria, whose leaders were reluctant to get involved in a war with
the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, which was nominally an ally of Greece,
stalled, resisting German pressure. After the Germans offered Greek
territory in Thrace and exempted it from participation in the invasion
of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria joined the Axis on March 1, 1941. When the
Germans agreed to settle for Yugoslav neutrality in the war against
Greece, without demanding transit rights for Axis troops, Yugoslavia
reluctantly joined the Axis on March 25, 1941. Two days later, Serbian
military officers overthrew the government that had signed the
Tripartite Pact. After the subsequent invasion and dismemberment of
Yugoslavia by Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria in April, the newly
established and so-called Independent State of Croatia joined the Axis
on June 15, 1941.

On June 26, 1941, four days after the Axis invasion of the Soviet
Union, Finland, seeking to regain territory lost during the 1939-1940
Winter War, entered the war against the USSR as a “co-belligerent.”
Finland never signed the Tripartite Pact.

After Japan’s surprise attack on the United States fleet anchored at
Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and the declaration of war
on the United States by Germany and the European Axis powers within a
week, the Atlantic and Pacific wars became a truly world war.

AXIS DEFEATThe Allied Powers, led by Great Britain, the
United States, and the Soviet Union, defeated the Axis in World War II.
Italy was the first Axis partner to give up: it surrendered to the
Allies on September 8, 1943, six weeks after leaders of the Italian
Fascist Party deposed Fascist leader and Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini. On August 23, 1944, following the overthrow of dictator
Marshal Ion Antonescu, Romania switched sides: Romanian troops fought
alongside Soviet troops for the remainder of the war. After the Soviets
rejected its offer of an armistice, Bulgaria surrendered on September 8,
1944, as the Communist-led Fatherland Front seized power from the Axis
government in a coup and then declared war on Nazi Germany. On September
19, 1944, Finland signed an armistice with the Soviet Union.

The German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 succeeded in its
primary purpose: to prevent the Hungarian leaders from deserting the
Axis as the Romanians would later do. Hungary never surrendered; the war
ended for Hungary only when Soviet troops drove the last pro-Axis
Hungarian troops and police units and the members of the Arrow Cross
government across Hungary’s western border into Austria in early April
1945. Slovakia, which German troops occupied in the summer of 1944 to
suppress the Slovak uprising, remained in the Axis as a puppet state
until the Soviets captured the capital, Bratislava, in early April.
Fanatical remnants of the Croat Ustasa remained in Croatia until Tito’s
Partisans captured or drove them across the border into German-occupied
Slovenia and Austria itself in the last days of April 1945.

On May 7, 1945, seven days after Hitler committed suicide, Nazi
Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Japan fought on
alone, surrendering formally on September 2, 1945.